Whether it’s by hackers or human error, data stored in the cloud can be stolen or lost. We’ve all learned that hard lesson either personally or through devastating incidents such as the one Mat Honan experienced (and about which I’ve posted several blogs).

But what can we do? We’re being reminded how important it is to backup our data on our computers. Farhad Manjoo recently wrote about a service that is worth considering (www.slate.com/articles/technology.html; “You Should Back Up Your Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter Accounts –Here’s How”, August 17).

Mr. Manjoo identifies a key fact that we all need to remember. He writes that “while Google and others store and save emails on multiple machines, that doesn’t really mean it’s backed up.” So yes, our data’s being saved on machines but that doesn’t necessarily translate into it being backed up in the cloud.

In his article, Mr. Manjoo talks about the Backupify service. While he says he was initially skeptical about it, he now uses it, in part, because of Mr. Honan’s experience as well others who have suffered similar complete data losses. As he describes it, Backupify will back up all of an individual’s data from the various online services that person uses. This could include mail and contacts from Gmail, information from Google calendar and everything an individual might have stored on an array of other online services (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter). Backupify is free for 1 gigabyte of storage but there are fees charged based on larger gigabytes of storage.

I haven’t looked into Backupify yet so can’t vouch for it. But I’m sharing Mr. Manjoo’s article because it provides in-depth information based on his personal use. I wanted to make sure you knew about this service in case you’re interested in another way to make sure your data is backed up and won’t be lost if something (intentional or unintentional) should happen.